


Appearances

by Lycaenion



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:24:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7649791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lycaenion/pseuds/Lycaenion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets, exactly what it says in the tags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appearances

The children of the forest had no daemons, and the First Men feared them. What they did not know, and never learned, was that, not being human, that essential part of them (the closest word the children had to _soul_ was something like _awareness_ ) expressed itself differently. It took root in the awakened weirwoods when their carved eyes opened; it followed the greenseers, who left currents of Dust in their wake; it flowed like water into soil and pool and thence into living things, changed but never destroyed.

It was more or less exactly what happened to a daemon when their person died.

* * *

Sometimes Tyrion wanted Riala to be a lioness so much that it hurt, and sometimes he prayed she would settle as anything else. A monkey, maybe, or one of the huge water bugs that found their way into the pools in the bowels of Casterly Rock, snapping hideous jaws that bit as hard as any lion (if a lion was the size of your thumb, and your thumb was the size of an ordinary man's).

If she were a lioness, his father would _have_ to acknowledge him, stop begrudging him every bite of food and drink of wine and even the air he breathed. The fact that he lived, and thrived after a fashion, was a thorn in Tywin's side. Or paw, rather. But if she were something rude, grasping or skittering or pestilential, then Tyrion was free to glory in it. He might even surprise people who dismissed him out of hand, as he had been doing all his life.

 _Be a lioness around Father_ , he tried to tell her, so she could get used to it. But when Tywin looked at her, cold as the drowning of the Reynes, she trembled and shrank and became a little cat. Not a kitten, but a full-grown cat like Tyrion was a man (he was three-and-ten), with stumps of legs and a broad, unlovely face that always looked interested in something, and though her coat shone gold in the sunlight that was as Lannister as she could be, and one day she stayed like that. A stunted mockery, just like him.

(Joanna's daemon had _not_ been a lion, had been a cat, too. Tyrion was never supposed to have known that.)

**Author's Note:**

> Tyrion's daemon was named by [CampAsHeck67. ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CampAsHeck67)


End file.
